Scailex Gains, Saban-Partner Deal Seen Completed: Tel Aviv Mover

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Scailex Corp., which is selling a
stake in Partner Communications Co. to Saban Capital Group.
Inc., gained the most in more than a month as a Saban official
said the deal would be completed today.

The shares advanced 13 percent, the biggest gain since Dec.
19, to 5.7 shekels, in 1.6 times the three-month average volume
at the close in Tel Aviv. Partner shares advanced 0.6 percent to
20.44 shekels as the TA-25 benchmark index declined 0.5 percent.

“The Partner sale will be completed today,” Moshe Debby,
a spokesman for Saban Capital in Israel said today by phone from
Tel Aviv.

Scailex, which held 44.54 percent of Partner, agreed to
sell a 30.73 percent stake in the company to an Israeli unit of
Saban, according to a filing to the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange on
Nov. 30. Saban will pay 250 million shekels ($65.5 million) in
cash and assume a $300 million debt Scailex owes to Hong Kong’s
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. The Asian holding company abandoned plans
in August to become a Partner stakeholder.

“The deal will inject much needed cash into Scailex and
will in the short- to medium-term ease liquidity concerns,” Ori
Licht, head of research at I.B.I-Israel Brokerage & Investments
in Tel Aviv, said today by phone.

Standard & Poor’s Maalot said in an Oct. 22 report
“there’s a risk” that Scailex won’t meet its near-term debt
commitments, reiterating its ilCC rating on the company, the
second-worst junk rating.